This document summarizes the key findings from a survey of 1,900 remote workers around the world. The survey found that a large majority (90%) of remote workers would prefer to work remotely for the rest of their careers and encourage others to do the same (94%). The biggest benefits of remote work are flexible schedules (43%) and spending time with family (15%), while the biggest struggles are loneliness (21%), collaboration difficulties, and home distractions. Most remote workers primarily work from home (78%) and have traveled while working remotely (81%), with 43% spending 10% or less of their time traveling. A majority of remote worker respondents (70%) work remotely 100% of the time. Reported annual salaries ranged
2. Overview
To better understand how remote work is changing we teamed up with
Workfrom and Hubstaff and collected data from over 1,900 remote
workers around the world to create the State of Remote Work 2018
report.
The report shows us how remote workers around the world are working,
the benefits and struggles of working remotely, and what changes they’re
making for the future.
Here’s what this report will cover…
3. Contents
1. How Satisfied Are Remote Workers
2. The Benefits and Struggles of Working Remotely
3. Where Do Remote Workers Actually Work?
4. How Companies Are Thinking About Remote Work in 2018
5. How Much Remote Workers Earn
4. Who we surveyed
We had 1,900 remote workers from 90 countries around the world
participate in the survey that helped create this report.
Most of the people we surveyed work in the software industry (26%)
followed by IT and Services (20%) and Marketing (19%). Respondents
primarily work on marketing (25%) and engineering (22%) teams.
The majority of respondents (58%) work remotely for a company while
28% work as freelancers and 14% run their own companies.
6. A large majority of
respondents, 90%, would
prefer to work remotely
for the rest of their
careers.
Do remote workers want to be remote
for the rest of their careers?
7. A large majority of
respondents, 94%,
encourage others to work
remotely.
Do remote workers encourage others
to work remotely?
9. The biggest benefit to
working remotely is the
ability to have a
flexible schedule —
43% of remote
workers were in
agreement about this.
The second biggest
benefit? Being able to
spend time with family
(15%).
What’s the biggest benefit to working remotely?
10. Loneliness (21 percent),
collaborating and/or
communicating (21
percent) and
distractions at home (16
percent) are the biggest
struggles of remote
workers.
What’s the biggest struggle to working remotely?
11. According to our data, 55%
of remote workers take
fewer than 15 days of
vacation per year. The
smallest range of vacation
days in our survey — 0 to 5
days — is the norm for
16% of remote workers.
How many vacation days do remote workers take?
13. For 78% of remote
workers, home is their
primary place of work.
The office came in as
the runner-up work
location with 9% of the
respondents, and
coworking spaces came
in at 7%.
Where do remote workers primarily work from?
14. A majority of respondents,
81%, have traveled
outside of their home city
and worked at the same
time.
Do remote workers ever travel outside of their
home city and work at the same time?
15. A total of 43% of
respondents said they
spend 10% or less of their
time traveling while
working remotely.
What percentage of the year do remote workers
who travel, travel and work at the same time?
17. A majority of respondents,
70%, work 100%
remotely.
How many remote workers are remote
100% of the time?
18. For workers who aren’t
100% remote, the majority
(32%) work remotely
between 11-30% of their
time.
What percentage of time do remote workers
work remotely?
19. Of the companies with
remote workers, 22
percent have fewer
than 10 employees, 17
percent have 11-25
employees, and 15
percent have over
1,000 employees.
What percentage of employees work remotely?
21. The results show that
28 percent of remote
workers make less
than $25,000 USD per
year,18 percent make
$25,001 - $50,000,
and18 percent make
$50,001 - $75,000.
How much to remote workers make per year?